Pour Me A Story, Vol. 35
the Cincinnati Edition
what’s up gang! glad to be back in your inboxes.
as I foreshadowed last week, this edition (and every edition going forward) is coming to you direct from Cincinnati, Ohio, one of dozens of places nicknamed the Queen City in this fine country.
we rolled into town sometime around 7:30pm last Friday night, absolutely sick of being confined to a 2010 Subaru Forester and itching to chow down on my favorite local delicacy. well okay maybe it was just me on the last one, but we definitely had Skyline Chili for dinner.
all things considered, the move went swimmingly. the only casualties from a material standpoint were a couple of broken salt and pepper shakers, and we’re slowly but surely finding places for all of our things. and folks, there’s nothing like “moving 1,200 miles across the country” to make you realize “wow, I own an unnecessary amount of shit.” but enough about my sneaker collection.
on top of everything, I’m proud of how my little family has absolutely crushed the entire process. even though I had to start back at work this week, Alex has taken charge of the bulk of the organizing and arranging and unpacking and figuring out what this place is eventually gonna look like, and I couldn’t be luckier. meanwhile the baby has taken to her new room like a duck to water and didn’t skip a beat in her sleep schedule, which frankly is absolutely the most important thing out of all of it. I’ll sit on the floor couch-less for the next year if it means she continues to sleep through the night and take her naps.
Adapt Or Perish, For The Fourth Time
I may have said it in these pages before, but in the eight (!) years since I immigrated from Australia to these shores, a common thread through all of my experiences here has been “adapt or perish.”
initially, that meant use of the language. when I first moved to central Maine, I did so because I’d been offered a newspaper job there and, as it turns out, a strong grasp of American English is reasonably important in such a role. that meant I had to unlearn everything about the Queen’s English that I had spent almost three decades of my life mastering. even on my first day in Augusta, a coworker who was taking me around some apartment showings pulled up outside of one place and asked me what I was standing on.
“you mean the sidewalk?”
“no, the four-letter word for it.”
“oh, kerb?”
“yes. how do you spell that?”
“uhh. ‘K-E-R-B’?”
“nope.”
“shit.”
there were dozens of parts of speech and spelling of words that I had to break my brain out of the habit of using, lest my coworkers look at me like I had two heads. in one of my columns, I wrote about moving from one apartment to another, and referred to “removalists,” which is what we call “burly guys who pack your shit in the truck, drive it to your new place, unload it, then charge you through the nose for the service.” my editor thought I was giving movers a fancy title as though they were archaeologists or something.
anyway, this is getting long-winded. the point was that, as someone who doesn’t like to find himself at the center of attention at any level, I figured the best way for me to fly under the radar and truly assimilate, rather than ride the coattails of my weird accent and unfamiliar passport, was to adapt, whether that meant spelling, pronunciation, or eventually even tamping down my accent so as not to be treated differently to anybody else.
by the time I arrived in Denver I was in a pretty good “adapt” groove, but that was four years ago and everything became very familiar. now, having uprooted and moved to the Midwest, I’m finding myself re-learning things all over again.
back in 2013, when I initially arrived in Denver on a three-month stopover before heading to Maine, I had a revelation, which I wrote about a year later. the relevant part is below:
When I first arrived in Denver after quitting my job and packing up my whole life, I was out walking a walk with the friend I was staying with, trying to get acclimatized to the altitude and shake off some jetlag. We were strolling through a beautifully manicured suburban street in a pretty affluent suburb of Denver when we passed a middle-aged guy doing the same thing. He and my friend were total strangers, but exchanged pleasantries in the street like they were old friends. I could barely manage an awkward half-smile and a nod before we set off again.
I immediately knew that I’d have to quickly undergo the attitude adjustment I referred to in the title. I’m not unfriendly by any means – I’ve got my old man’s gift for the gab and socially I’m pretty confident, even with strangers – but in the vast majority of American manners and politeness is a cut above the rest. Brisbane isn’t some huge cold metropolis, but I’d argue that most people wouldn’t go out of their way to make small talk with a stranger in the street in the course of their average day. I know I certainly didn’t make a habit of it, unless I was shooting the shit with a shop attendant or bartender or someone else who was generally a captive audience.
I’ve said it a million times since I’ve been here in Maine, but the people are just stunningly friendly for the most part. I’ve also said that I’m sure the novelty of being from away helps a lot, because people are naturally curious about what brought me 10,000 miles around the world to this rural state in the far north-east corner of the US. It’s not just Maine though – the Americans I’ve interacted with over the past six years far and wide have consistently blown me away with hospitality, kind gestures and good old-fashioned neighborly behavior.
As someone coming from a big-city environment where a lot of people just put their heads down and go about their business, it was kinda like being thrown in the deep end. I had to turn down my natural cynicism immediately and embrace the fact that people are just being…NICE. It’s easy to be aloof or think you’re somehow above the people who you interact with casually on a daily basis, and sure – you can get in and out with the minimum of personal contact. But not only do you get a far better response from people when you’re friendly, but it feels good. I’m not writing this as if it’s a new revelation, or something I’m only just discovering, but because it’s a pleasant yet challenging aspect of relocating here.
the biggest immediate difference I’ve noticed here in Cincinnati after four years in Denver is exactly this: people are openly and unbelievably friendly. I couldn’t have picked any of our Denver neighbors out of a line-up, but here our downstairs neighbors invited us for a pancake breakfast the morning after we arrived when I bumped into them in the driveway. the mail carrier was more cheery than someone delivering packages on foot in 145 percent humidity should rightly be, and folks just love to chat regardless of the setting. this is something I’ve got to readjust to again, but like 2014 Adrian said, it feels good.
humidity can fuck off though. my god, I forgot what that’s like too (bad).
Worthy Consumables
one great thing about this country is that something are gonna remain the same no matter where you go. you can always rely on your local strip mall to have a Jersey Mike’s sandwich place you can get lunch at while you figure out what the great neighborhood spot is (it’s Carl’s Deli, in case you were wondering), and you know you can always find a Walmart or Target or Home Depot to get whatever annoying little thing you threw out before you left and need to replace.
the other great thing about it is completely the opposite: that there are so many regional and local wonders to discover no matter where you land. I headed to the grocery store to pick up some essentials Friday night after we arrived, and that amounted to “a six-pack, a bottle of bubbles, milk for the baby and some fruit.”
as I stood in front of the beer cooler, I realized that I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at, because Cincinnati and Ohio of course have their own craft beer brands and breweries, none of which I’m familiar with. I grabbed Fifty West’s Coast to Coast IPA, and while it was nice to drink a local beer at the end of two long days of driving, it didn’t exactly hit the spot in the warm air of the empty apartment. there was one thing I was craving, and I didn’t scratch that itch until Sunday evening.
that’s right, it was Miller High Life, the champagne of beers. Denver is a Coors town, and you genuinely have a tough time finding any Miller products, especially High Life. I think the last time I had one was on a Narragansett Beach trip with my festival partners in the summer of 2015, and after a day of sweating profusely and not knowing where our towels were to take a shower, a cold High Life was exactly what I needed. the 12-pack is still there in the fridge, waiting for me to take down one or two of those bad boys at the end of each of these long, hot days.
because sometimes familiarity is just what you want, y’know?
Parting Note
I figured I’d see whether there were any songs about Cincinnati that I could really authentically round this edition out with, so like any idiot who’s spent his life in front of a computer would do, I googled “songs about Cincinnati.” I was surprised to see Public Enemy on the list, until I remembered that the city’s name featured in the very first bar, and that’s good enough for me.
thanks as always for tuning in pals, especially if you made it this far down without the promise of a guest interviewee. I appreciate you on these ones even more than usual. until next week!
— adrian ✌🏻